Sunday, October 2, 2011

Fall is definitely my favorite time of year. Cool crisp days. Blazes of color. Cuddling around a bonfire with a steaming cup of coffee. *blissful sigh* This particular spoke of the seasonal wheel renews my soul.

And during this gorgeous time of year, daughter and I always enjoy our annual excursions to a multitude of craft fall festivals. Here’s one of the goodies she and I discovered during our most recent trip.

I always take Jasper along. He loathes being left behind and always behaves like the perfect gentleman no matter how many small children stop us and ask, “Can I pet your puppy?” Jasper has a wag of his tail and a sloppy kiss for each and every one.

He got a bit perturbed at me during this most recent trip. Look at this awesome pet stroller I found! I put Jasper inside, zip it shut and he rides around in style. Well. He rode around in style AFTER he glared up at me through the screen and telepathed some extremely foul words that I’d rather not include in this post. Jasper has this keen ability to let me know exactly what he’s thinking…and he wasn’t being very nice. I feel certain he called me some very choice names. After he finished making his opinion known, he finally settled down on the sheepskin pad and enjoyed the ride.

I also made another observation during this trip. Every young person I encountered from high school age and younger was the perfect example of a polite, considerate individual. Yes ma’am. No ma’am. Excuse me. Please. Thank you. All of them were a delight.

They were a direct contrast to some of the so-called adults I endured. Even though these individuals were my age and older, several of them pushed, shoved, snatched, grabbed and generally exhibited rude behavior that is unacceptable in a crowd.

Parts of the festival were quite crowded, shoulder to shoulder in fact. One older gentleman decided that it was more effective to push people aside and bellow, “beep beep beep - I’m coming through” instead of the more acceptable, “excuse me, please”. Those type folks have a bad effect on me. They tend to trigger an extremely uncontrollable urge to either “accidently” stick out my foot and trip them or suddenly find it very necessary to stick my bony elbows out as far as they will go.

So, bravo to the polite, well-mannered youngsters in this world. I did notice and I do appreciate how you made my day more pleasant. I rarely hear about you on the news. Only the bad apples seem to get the spotlight.